1.
Andong Province
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Andong / Antung, or Liaodong was a former province in Northeast China, located in what is now part of Liaoning and Jilin provinces. It was bordered on the southeast by the Yalu River, which separated it from Korea, the name of the province Antung in Chinese means pacify the east and was likely inspired by the Protectorate General to Pacify the East established during the Tang Dynasty. Antung was further sub-divided in 1939 into Antung Province and Tonghua Province, after the annexation of Manchukuo by the Republic of China after the end of World War II, the Kuomintang reunited Antung and Tonghua, and continued to recognize the area as Antung Province. The capital of Antung Province from 1934-1939 was Tonghua, the area of the province was. List of administrative divisions of Manchukuo Map showing the location of Andong within the territories of the ROC map of the Andong Province of Manchukuo
2.
Manchuria
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Manchuria is a modern name, first created by the Japanese, given to a large geographic region in Northeast Asia. Depending on the context, Manchuria can either refer to a region that falls entirely within the Peoples Republic of China, the definition of Manchuria can be any one of several regions of various size. These are, from smallest to largest, Northeast China, consisting of Heilongjiang, Jilin and this is the area referred to as Manchuria in the World Geographical Scheme for Recording Plant Distributions. Inner Manchuria, the above, plus parts of modern Inner Mongolia, The above, plus Outer Manchuria, the area from the Amur and Ussuri rivers to the Stanovoy Mountains, in Russian administrative terms, Ussuri krai, southern Harbin oblast, Primorskiy kray. The above, plus Sakhalin Island, which is included on Qing dynasty maps as part of Outer Manchuria even though it is not explicitly mentioned in the Treaty of Nerchinsk. The island was included in Manchuria on maps made by the Japanese Shogunate. Despite of lines on maps and empiress political claims, the island was inhabited by Ainu people until the Soviet Union enforced a policy after 1945. Three centuries and a half must now pass away before entering upon the act of the Manchu drama. During the ensuing two hundred years the Nü-chêns were scarcely heard of, the House of Ming being busily occupied in other directions and it may be noted here that Manchuria is unknown to the Chinese or to the Manchus themselves as a geographical expression. The present extensive home of the Manchus is usually spoken of as the Three Eastern Provinces, namely, Shêngking, or Liao-tung, or Kuan-tung, Kirin, and Heilungchiang or Tsitsihar. — Herbert A. Giles, China and the Manchus,1912 Manchuria is a translation of the Japanese word Manshū, the Manchu and Chinese languages had no such word as Manchuria and the word has imperialist connotations. According to Bill Sewell, it was Europeans who first started using the name Manchuria to refer to the location, the historian Gavan McCormack agreed with Robert H. G. The Japanese had their own motive for deliberately spreading the usage of the term Manchuria, the historian Norman Smith wrote that The term Manchuria is controversial. Professor Mariko Asano Tamanoi said that she should use the term in quotation marks when referring to Manchuria, in his 2012 dissertation on the Jurchen people to obtain a Doctor of Philosophy degree in History from the University of Washington, Professor Chad D. In the 18th-century Europe, the later known as Manchuria was most commonly referred to as Tartary. However, the term Manchuria started appearing by the end of the century, in current Chinese parlance, an inhabitant of the Northeast, or Northeast China, is a Northeasterner. In China, the term Manchuria is rarely used today, and this usage is seen in the expression Chuǎng Guāndōng referring to the mass migration of Han Chinese to Manchuria in the 19th and 20th centuries. The name Guandong later came to be used more narrowly for the area of the Kwantung Leased Territory on the Liaodong Peninsula and it is not to be confused with the southern province of Guangdong
3.
Northeast China
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Northeast China or Dongbei is a geographical region of China. It also historically corresponds with the term Manchuria in the English language, the heartland of the region is the Northeast China Plain. Due to the shrinking of its industrial sector and decline of its economic growth. The region is congruent with some definitions of Manchuria in historical foreign usage. Another term for the area is Guandong, meaning east of the Pass, Northeast China was the homeland of several ethnic groups, including the Manchus, Ulchs, Hezhen. Various ethnic groups and their kingdoms, including the Sushen, Xianbei. Many Korean kingdoms have risen to power in Manchuria, including Gojoseon, Buyeo, Goguryeo. Yan State once occupied the Liaodong Peninsula, Han Chinese dynasties in China loosely controlled the southern parts of the region, during the Song dynasty, the Khitan set up the Liao Dynasty in Northeast China. Later, the Jurchen overthrew the Liao and formed the Jin dynasty, in AD1234, the Jin dynasty fell to the Mongols, whose Yuan Dynasty was later replaced by the Ming Dynasty in 1368. In 1644, the Manchu conquered the entirety of China and established the Qing dynasty, Northeast China came under influence of the Russian Empire with the building of the Chinese Eastern Railway through Harbin to Vladivostok. The Empire of Japan replaced Russian influence in the region as a result of the Russo-Japanese War in 1904–1905, during the Warlord Era in China, Zhang Zuolin established himself in Northeast China, but was murdered by the Japanese for being too independent. The last Qing dynasty emperor, Puyi, was placed on the throne to lead a Japanese puppet state of Manchukuo. After the atomic bombing of Japan in 1945, the Soviet Union invaded the region as part of its declaration of war against Japan, from 1945 to 1948, Northeast China was a base area for the Communist Peoples Liberation Army in the Chinese Civil War. Northeast China has a population of about 107,400,000 people. The overwhelming majority of the population in the Northeast is Han Chinese, people from the Northeast would first identify themselves as Northeasterners before affiliating to individual provinces and cities/towns. The Northeast was one of the earliest regions to industrialize in China during the era of Manchukuo, after the founding of the Peoples Republic of China, Northeast China continued to be a major industrial base of the country. The region is, on the whole, more urbanised than most parts of China. Major cities include Shenyang, Dalian, Harbin, Changchun and Anshan, other cities include the steel making centres of Fushun and Anshan in Liaoning, Jilin City in Jilin, and Qiqihar and Mudanjiang in Heilongjiang
4.
Simplified Chinese characters
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Simplified Chinese characters are standardized Chinese characters prescribed in the Table of General Standard Chinese Characters for use in mainland China. Along with traditional Chinese characters, it is one of the two character sets of the contemporary Chinese written language. The government of the Peoples Republic of China in mainland China has promoted them for use in printing since the 1950s and 1960s in an attempt to increase literacy and they are officially used in the Peoples Republic of China and Singapore. Traditional Chinese characters are used in Hong Kong, Macau. Overseas Chinese communities generally tend to use traditional characters, Simplified Chinese characters may be referred to by their official name above or colloquially. Strictly, the latter refers to simplifications of character structure or body, character forms that have existed for thousands of years alongside regular, Simplified character forms were created by decreasing the number of strokes and simplifying the forms of a sizable proportion of traditional Chinese characters. Some simplifications were based on popular cursive forms embodying graphic or phonetic simplifications of the traditional forms, some characters were simplified by applying regular rules, for example, by replacing all occurrences of a certain component with a simplified version of the component. Variant characters with the pronunciation and identical meaning were reduced to a single standardized character. Finally, many characters were left untouched by simplification, and are identical between the traditional and simplified Chinese orthographies. Some simplified characters are very dissimilar to and unpredictably different from traditional characters and this often leads opponents not well-versed in the method of simplification to conclude that the overall process of character simplification is also arbitrary. In reality, the methods and rules of simplification are few, on the other hand, proponents of simplification often flaunt a few choice simplified characters as ingenious inventions, when in fact these have existed for hundreds of years as ancient variants. However, the Chinese government never officially dropped its goal of further simplification in the future, in August 2009, the PRC began collecting public comments for a modified list of simplified characters. The new Table of General Standard Chinese Characters consisting of 8,105 characters was promulgated by the State Council of the Peoples Republic of China on June 5,2013, cursive written text almost always includes character simplification. Simplified forms used in print have always existed, they date back to as early as the Qin dynasty, One of the earliest proponents of character simplification was Lubi Kui, who proposed in 1909 that simplified characters should be used in education. In the years following the May Fourth Movement in 1919, many anti-imperialist Chinese intellectuals sought ways to modernise China, Traditional culture and values such as Confucianism were challenged. Soon, people in the Movement started to cite the traditional Chinese writing system as an obstacle in modernising China and it was suggested that the Chinese writing system should be either simplified or completely abolished. Fu Sinian, a leader of the May Fourth Movement, called Chinese characters the writing of ox-demons, lu Xun, a renowned Chinese author in the 20th century, stated that, If Chinese characters are not destroyed, then China will die. Recent commentators have claimed that Chinese characters were blamed for the problems in China during that time
5.
Traditional Chinese characters
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Traditional Chinese characters are Chinese characters in any character set that does not contain newly created characters or character substitutions performed after 1946. They are most commonly the characters in the character sets of Taiwan, of Hong Kong. Currently, a number of overseas Chinese online newspapers allow users to switch between both sets. In contrast, simplified Chinese characters are used in mainland China, Singapore, the debate on traditional and simplified Chinese characters has been a long-running issue among Chinese communities. Although simplified characters are taught and endorsed by the government of Mainland China, Traditional characters are used informally in regions in China primarily in handwriting and also used for inscriptions and religious text. They are often retained in logos or graphics to evoke yesteryear, nonetheless, the vast majority of media and communications in China is dominated by simplified characters. Taiwan has never adopted Simplified Chinese characters since it is ruled by the Republic of China, the use of simplified characters in official documents is even prohibited by the government in Taiwan. Simplified characters are not well understood in general, although some stroke simplifications that have incorporated into Simplified Chinese are in common use in handwriting. For example, while the name of Taiwan is written as 臺灣, similarly, in Hong Kong and Macau, Traditional Chinese has been the legal written form since colonial times. In recent years, because of the influx of mainland Chinese tourists, today, even government websites use simplified Chinese, as they answer to the Beijing government. This has led to concerns by residents to protect their local heritage. In Southeast Asia, the Chinese Filipino community continues to be one of the most conservative regarding simplification, while major public universities are teaching simplified characters, many well-established Chinese schools still use traditional characters. Publications like the Chinese Commercial News, World News, and United Daily News still use traditional characters, on the other hand, the Philippine Chinese Daily uses simplified. Aside from local newspapers, magazines from Hong Kong, such as the Yazhou Zhoukan, are found in some bookstores. In case of film or television subtitles on DVD, the Chinese dub that is used in Philippines is the same as the one used in Taiwan and this is because the DVDs belongs to DVD Region Code 3. Hence, most of the subtitles are in Traditional Characters, overseas Chinese in the United States have long used traditional characters. A major influx of Chinese immigrants to the United States occurred during the half of the 19th century. Therefore, the majority of Chinese language signage in the United States, including street signs, Traditional Chinese characters are called several different names within the Chinese-speaking world
6.
Pinyin
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Pinyin, or Hànyǔ Pīnyīn, is the official romanization system for Standard Chinese in mainland China, Malaysia, Singapore, and Taiwan. It is often used to teach Standard Chinese, which is written using Chinese characters. The system includes four diacritics denoting tones, Pinyin without tone marks is used to spell Chinese names and words in languages written with the Latin alphabet, and also in certain computer input methods to enter Chinese characters. The pinyin system was developed in the 1950s by many linguists, including Zhou Youguang and it was published by the Chinese government in 1958 and revised several times. The International Organization for Standardization adopted pinyin as a standard in 1982. The system was adopted as the standard in Taiwan in 2009. The word Hànyǔ means the language of the Han people. In 1605, the Jesuit missionary Matteo Ricci published Xizi Qiji in Beijing and this was the first book to use the Roman alphabet to write the Chinese language. Twenty years later, another Jesuit in China, Nicolas Trigault, neither book had much immediate impact on the way in which Chinese thought about their writing system, and the romanizations they described were intended more for Westerners than for the Chinese. One of the earliest Chinese thinkers to relate Western alphabets to Chinese was late Ming to early Qing Dynasty scholar-official, the first late Qing reformer to propose that China adopt a system of spelling was Song Shu. A student of the great scholars Yu Yue and Zhang Taiyan, Song had been to Japan and observed the effect of the kana syllabaries. This galvanized him into activity on a number of fronts, one of the most important being reform of the script, while Song did not himself actually create a system for spelling Sinitic languages, his discussion proved fertile and led to a proliferation of schemes for phonetic scripts. The Wade–Giles system was produced by Thomas Wade in 1859, and it was popular and used in English-language publications outside China until 1979. This Sin Wenz or New Writing was much more sophisticated than earlier alphabets. In 1940, several members attended a Border Region Sin Wenz Society convention. Mao Zedong and Zhu De, head of the army, both contributed their calligraphy for the masthead of the Sin Wenz Societys new journal. Outside the CCP, other prominent supporters included Sun Yat-sens son, Sun Fo, Cai Yuanpei, the countrys most prestigious educator, Tao Xingzhi, an educational reformer. Over thirty journals soon appeared written in Sin Wenz, plus large numbers of translations, biographies, some contemporary Chinese literature, and a spectrum of textbooks
7.
Peninsula
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A peninsula is a piece of land surrounded by water on the majority of its border, while being connected to a mainland from which it extends out. Examples include the upper and lower peninsulas of the state of Michigan, the surrounding water is usually understood to be continuous, though not necessarily named as a single body of water. Peninsulas are not always named as such, one can also be a headland, cape, island promontory, bill, point, a point is generally considered a tapering piece of land projecting into a body of water that is less prominent than a cape. A river which courses through a very tight meander is also said to form a peninsula within the loop of water. In English, the plural of peninsula is peninsulas or, less commonly, peninsulas can be found on coastlines and in smaller bodies of water throughout the world, ranging in scale from square meters to millions of square kilometers. Theres the Scandinavian Peninsula in Northern Europe, and in Southern Europe theres the Iberian Peninsula, the Italian Peninsula, south America has the Brunswick Peninsula, and Antarctica has the Antarctic Peninsula. In Africa, theres the Horn of Africa, and in Australia, asia has the 3 largest peninsulas in the world, the Arabian Peninsula, the Indian Peninsula, and the Indochinese Peninsula
8.
Liaoning
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Liaoning is a province of China, located in the northeast of the country. The modern province was established in 1907 as Fengtian or Fengtien province and it was also known as Mukden province at the time, for the Manchu pronunciation of Shengjing, the former name of the provincial capital Shenyang. Under the Japanese-puppet Manchukuo regime, the province reverted to its 1907 name but the name Liaoning was restored in 1945, Liaoning is the southernmost part of Manchuria, the Chinese Northeast. The Yalu River marks its border with North Korea, emptying into the Korea Bay between Dandong in Liaoning and Sinuiju in North Korea, the characters forming the provinces modern Chinese name are 辽 and 宁. They are the forms of the traditional characters 遼 and 寧. The first character literally means far, distant but is actually a reference to the Liao River which flows through the territory. The second literally means peace, calm but in such Chinese place names actually has the sense of pacified, made peaceful, here in reference to the turbulent situation of Manchuria in the late 1920s. In both English and Chinese, however, it is most common to gloss the name as the more literal Peace on the Liao, the provinces one-character abbreviation in Chinese is 辽. Liaoning is located in the part of Northeast China. In the past, it formed part of Korean kingdoms as Gojoseon, Goguryeo, and Balhae, as well as Chinese polities such as the Yan State and it was also inhabited by non-Han peoples such as Xiongnu, Donghu, Xianbei. In addition, the Khitan, Jurchen, Mongol Empire and Northern Yuan ruled Liaoning, the Ming Empire took control of Liaoning in 1371, just three years after the expulsion of the Mongols from Beijing. Around 1442, a wall was constructed to defend the agricultural heartland of the province from a potential threat from the Jurchen-Mongol Oriyanghan from the northwest. Between 1467 and 1468, the wall was expanded to protect the region from the northeast as well, although similar in purpose to the Great Wall of China, this Liaodong Wall was of a lower-cost design. While stones and tiles were used in parts, most of the wall was in fact simply an earth dike with moats on both sides. Despite the Liaodong Wall, the Manchus conquered Liaodong, or eastern Liaoning, in the early 17th century, decades before the rest of China fell to them. The Manchu dynasty, styled Later Jin, established its capital in 1616–1621 in Xingjing and it was moved to Dongjing, and finally in 1625 to Shengjing. Although the main Qing capital was moved from Shengjing to Beijing after it fell to the Qing in 1644, in the Governors words, Tieling and Fushun only have a few vagrants. West of the Liaohe, only Ningyuan, Jinzhou, and Guangning had any significant populations remaining, in the latter half of the seventeenth century, the imperial Qing government recruited migrants from south of the Great Wall to settle the relatively sparsely populated area of Fengtian Province
9.
Liao River
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The Liao River is the principal river in southern Northeast China, and one of the seven main river systems in mainland China. The province of Liaoning and the Liaodong Peninsula derive their names from this river, the river is also popularly known as the mother river in Northeast China. The Liao River has a high sediment load because many parts of it flow through powdery loess. The Liao River is also an important geographical landmark, as it divides the province of Liaoning into two broad regions — Liaodong and Liaoxi. The Liao River is formed from the confluence of its two tributaries, the Xiliao River from the west, and Dongliao River from the east. The resultant river, the Liao River proper, then enters Liaoning Province and courses southwards through the Northeast China Plain and it makes a westward turn near Pingdingbao Town, Tieling County, and after receiving more tributaries, earns an infrequently used nickname Juliu River. The eastern distributary, originally the one and the main body of lower Liao River, was called the Wailiao River. However, the Liao River Delta is has a flat topography made up of soft sediment soil and this coupled with the risk of storm surges due to the regions low elevation, created a huge problem in flood control. This flood risk at the section of the Liao River system was particularly threatening to Yingkou. Therefore, since 1958, the Hun River and Taizi River were no longer considered tributaries of the Liao River, but an autonomous water system of their own. Xiliao River, historically known as Huang River, is the largest tributary of Liao River, running 449 kilometres. The Xiliao River is formed by the confluence of Laoha River flowing from the southwest and its headwaters arise in the low mountains near Dongliao County in Jilin Province, where more than 80% of its entire length resides. The Dongliao River then traverses a short west course through Liaoning Province and these following tributaries drain into the Liao River proper throughout its course within the Liaoning Province. Running 415 kilometres and draining a basin of 11,500 square kilometres and it flows through the most populous area of Liaoning Province, including the provincial capital and largest city, Shenyang, as well as the 10th largest city, Fushun. The river got its current name from the fast flow speed and high sediment load, the rivers middle section was also called Shen River, which gave name to the capital city Shenyang to its north, and the lower section is also called Clam River. However in 1958, an engineering project was conducted to address flood control problem in the coastal area near Yingkou. Therefore since 1958, the Hun and Taizi River were considered an independent river system of their own and it was formally the third largest tributary of the Liao River, running 413 kilometres and draining a basin of 13,900 square kilometres. Like its sister river, the Hun River, the Taizi River has numerous tributaries and its headwaters arise from hill regions between Benxi and Fushun, and contains the famous Benxi Water Caves
10.
Yan (state)
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Yan was an ancient Chinese state during the Zhou dynasty. During the Warring States period, the court was moved to another capital at Xiadu at times. The history of Yan began in the Western Zhou in the early first millennium BC, after the authority of the Zhou king declined during the Spring and Autumn period in the 8th century BC, Yan survived and became one of the strongest states in China. Yan experienced a period of independence after the collapse of the Qin dynasty in 207 BC. In the 11th century BC, Yans capital was based in what is now Liulihe Township, Fangshan District, Beijing, in the 3rd century BCE, the Yellow River followed a more northerly course than the present day. It emptied into the Bohai Sea at a point south of Tianjin in what is now Hebei as opposed to its end in Shandong. Yan stretched from the Yellow River to the Yalu River and from the mountains of Shanxi to the Liaodong Peninsula, as the most northeastern of all the Chinese states during this time period, Yan faced incursions from steppe nomads and built great walls in southern Liaoning. To the south, the states of Zhao and Qi were Yans main rivals. The mountainous border in the west between Zhao and Yan became the area in which their armies often clashed, despite this, the war between Zhao and Yan usually dragged on into a stalemate, requiring the help of other kingdoms to conclude. In the late 4th century, General Qin Kai invaded and defeated Gojoseon, the strongest opposition came from the Qi, one of the strongest states in China. In 314 BCE, taking advantage of a crisis within Yan, Qi invaded. However, due to the misconduct of Qi troops during the conquest of Yan a revolt eventually drove them away, Yans new king, King Zhao of Yan then plotted with the states of Zhao, Qin, Han and Wei for a joint expedition against Qi. Led by the brilliant tactician Yue Yi, it was successful and within a year most of Qis seventy walled cities had fallen, with the exception of Zimu. However, with the death of King Zhao and the expulsion of Yue Yi to Zhao by the new king, King Wei of Yan, despite the wars, Yan survived through the Warring States period. In 227 BCE, with Qin troops on the border after the collapse of Zhao, Crown Prince Dan sent an assassin named Jing Ke to kill the king of Qin, the mission failed, with Jing Ke dying at the hands of the King of Qin in Xianyang. Surprised and enraged by such an act, the king of Qin called on Wang Jian to destroy Yan. Crushing the bulk of the Yan army at the frozen Yi River, Ji fell the following year, in 222 BCE, Liaodong fell as well, and Yan was totally conquered by Qin. Yan was the third last state to fall, and with its destruction the fates of the two kingdoms were sealed
